I am pretty sure a good base runner with poor speed will be a "smart base runner" and not necessarily a guy with a lot of steals. Does the same logic apply to outfielders and range? If I have a guy with 90 range and 40 speed, I can't stick him in center and expect him to cover a lot of area. Correct?

Ditto on all the above, and base running is the more important IMO. Pure speed can help a guy's batting average, especially when coupled with high contact ratings. When stealing bases, a guy is not going to be a benefit with steals unless his base running ability is at 70 or higher, regardless of speed. When looking at steals, it is about percentage, a good base stealer needs to be safe on his attempts at about 85% of the time, or he is sitting at a wash in terms of runs created, or negative effect.

You can have 65 stolen bases, but if you are only safe 65% of the time, the guy is wasting his time running. I would rather have a guy steal 25 and be 90% safe.

Posted by rangerup on 1/30/2013 11:34:00 AM (view original):Ditto on all the above, and base running is the more important IMO. Pure speed can help a guy's batting average, especially when coupled with high contact ratings. When stealing bases, a guy is not going to be a benefit with steals unless his base running ability is at 70 or higher, regardless of speed. When looking at steals, it is about percentage, a good base stealer needs to be safe on his attempts at about 85% of the time, or he is sitting at a wash in terms of runs created, or negative effect.

You can have 65 stolen bases, but if you are only safe 65% of the time, the guy is wasting his time running. I would rather have a guy steal 25 and be 90% safe.

That assumes that 65% steal success rating is the cut off between positive and negative run production.

65% is roughly what the stat-nerds determined at one time based on PBP analysis of every MLB game played over a one or two season period, which I think was sometime during the 80's.

I'm not sure if that applies to HBD's model. I would hope that it's close.

Your right, we have no idea if it applies, but I use it as I have nothing more to go on. That study, and you can find it online, put to the fact that a lot of base stealers in the 80s (when the study was done) provided little to no benefit to their teams won/loss records, even though some of them were swiping up to 70 bases a year.

I like to see a players card where he stole 189 bases in a year (I am in some worlds where they have), it's cool. But I don't put much into the HBD game of stealing bases. The biggest advantage to the stolen base is to put pressure on the opposing team, namely the pitcher. I pitched in pro ball, and had games where these little bastards ran ran ran and gave me the heeby jeebies on the mound. It can get in your head. But in HBD no one has a real head so I think it has much less value.

I think it would have the biggest impact in HBD if you were to have high contact guys as well and set hit and run to a high setting. You have to assume it makes the infielders in HBD start moving, creating holes.

More seriously; infield hits are a flavor of single attributed more to speedier players, and don't actually help with anything. Bunt hits might or might not be the same; what I'd expect is that any increase in bunt hits would be from "sacrifice" situations, and would require a high bunt frequency for the team as well as high speed and high bunt rating. But since I personally take Earl Weaver's advice about the sacrifice bunt, I could be wrong here, and am willing to hear a counterargument.

More seriously; infield hits are a flavor of single attributed more to speedier players, and don't actually help with anything. Bunt hits might or might not be the same; what I'd expect is that any increase in bunt hits would be from "sacrifice" situations, and would require a high bunt frequency for the team as well as high speed and high bunt rating. But since I personally take Earl Weaver's advice about the sacrifice bunt, I could be wrong here, and am willing to hear a counterargument.

Easy to prove. Pick a world. Player records page. Single season infield hits leaders.

I checked all three of my worlds. 15 players in all. All the single season infield hits leaders had high speed + high bunting.